Cary Clack: Teenagers encouraged to make education a priority

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January 31, 2011

Cupid was getting his groove on at the Alamo Convocation Center and teenagers were riding that groove well.

Toward the end of Saturday's first San Antonio's Rock Your Future Gen Tx Fest, The Cupid Shuffle exploded over the sound system and a few hundred of the estimated 3,000 ninth graders in attendance rushed to fill the basketball court and dance in spectacular harmony.

"New Cupid, time for a change

Cupid shuffle, Cupid Shuffle

Down, down, do your dance, do your dance

Down, down, do your dance, do your dance."

Sitting in the bleachers, Al Silva laughed and looked as if he was tempted to hit the floor and join the kids and the adults dancing along with them, including former city councilman and current president and CEO of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce Richard Perez.

"This is great!" said Silva, chief operating officer of Labatt Food Service and chairman of the Generation TX board. "But next year, we need to fill this place."

This year wasn't bad. New Cupid, time for a change? New generation, time for a change, one in which going to college isn't a fantasy but a sure path for those who want it and who embrace the planning and work to navigate that path.

Generation TX is a statewide grass-roots crusade to inspire and challenge students and their families of not only the importance of going to college but also the accessibility of college. Every school district in San Antonio is targeted. The local Gen TX board, along with the P-16 Plus Council initiated under Mayor Phil Hardberger and headed by Bartell Zachry and Mayor Julißn Castro's Café College, is a vigorous assault on complacency, low expectations, harnessed dreams and unfulfilled potential.

Saturday's launch of Gen TX was a pep rally for academics, a celebration of intellectual prowess and achievement. The music was hip-hop, Tejano, merengue, country and rock and was the soundtrack to a continuous message trumpeting the importance of education.

"If you're going to go to college, make some noise!" the emcee exhorted repeatedly and, repeatedly, the students would shout out with gusto. There was a drumline competition (won by Brackenridge High School) and a cheerleading contest (won by Holmes High School).

Up on the rafters hung banners heralding championships won by athletes generations ago. In the bleachers was a new generation who, if education is truly cherished, may one day see banners hanging that acclaim the championships won in math, sciences, forensics and writing; a generation in which decorated letter jackets won and worn by academic superstars and all-stars are as numerous as those won on fields, courts and diamonds.

Gen TX and Saturday's "Rock Your Future" are gaze-lifters. They encourage young people to look beyond the narrow realties and expectations of their lives now and to lift their gaze to the future they want to imagine, to lift their gaze beyond today and into tomorrow.

Every day in school, each night studying can't be a pep rally of dance music and cheers. But the only way this city will change a culture that deceives its young into not believing in their brains and their futures is for the young, their families, their schools, their community and their business and political leaders to not only supremely value education but to embrace its unlimited promise.

On Saturday, most of the students sat in sections A to F. For the rest of their school years we want them to move and remain in A and B territory. The Cupid Shuffle instructs:

"To the right, to the right, to the right, to the right,

To the left, to the left, to the left, to the left,

Now kick, now kick, now kick, now kick."

OK, a great dance song but not the most incisive lyrics. Still, if we inspire our youth to raise their academic game and kick it into another level once those college admission letters begin rolling in from the right, to the right and from the left, to the left, we'll all be dancing.

Cary Clack's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. To leave him a message, call 210-250-3486 or e-mail him at cclack@express-news.net.